John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

The idea of denial and grief is a false connection. (Published 6/17/2014)

Q:

How emotionally safe is denial?

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Helen,

Thanks for your note and question.

In order to give our response, we first have to say that we do not believe there is such a thing as “denial” when it comes to grief.

In our 35 years of helping grieving people, not one of the thousands of people who contacted us was in denial that a loss had occurred.

The first thing they say to us is, “My mother died,” or “My wife divorced me.”

Those are absolute statements of loss or grief. There is no denial in them that a loss has occurred.

The idea of denial and grief is a false connection that snuck into our language-jargon, based on the alleged Stages of Dying as originally popularized by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler Ross. The denial she spoke of in her early book was about what a “dying person” might go through when told he or she had a terminal illness. It had nothing to do with the thoughts, feelings, or ideas you or I might have if and when someone important to us dies.

With that said, we can now tell you that denial is not emotionally safe. First of all it is not real, therefore it is not true, so it cannot help, it can only hurt and confuse a griever, distracting them from the very real emotions that are caused by the death of someone important to them.